Description of Research Expertise

T cells play essential roles in immune responses. We study how these functional abilities of T cells are acquired during their development. Like other blood cells, T cells originate from blood stem cells resident in the bone marrow. Uniquely among blood cells, their development completes at a distinct anatomical site, the thymus. We're interested in the mechanisms by which some hematopoietic progenitor cells migrate to the thymus. We're further interested in the the transcriptional mechanisms in the thymus that direct the earliest thymus colonizing progenitors down the T cell lineage. We hope to understand the regulatory and developmental logic that establishes a functioning immune system.

Current projects in the laboratory include:
(1) Migration of hematopoietic progenitors to the thymus.
Signals that permit circulating hematopoietic progenitors to selectively settle within the thymus from the blood, and how these signals change during thymic regeneration We're interested in whether chronic inflammation degrades T cell development, why this occurs, and whether ectopic expression of homing molecules can be used to enhance migration to the thymus.
(Schwarz and Bhandoola, Nature Immunology, 2004; Zlotoff et al., Blood, 2010; Zlotoff, Zhang, et al., Blood, 2011; Sultana et al., J Immunol., 2012)

(3) The development and function of Innate lymphoid cells.
Innate lymphoid cells have transcriptional programs that appear to mirror those of T cells. The comparison of innate lymphocyte cell development with T cell development provides an opportunity to understand the factors that underlie the shared as well as the unique features and functions of these apparently closely related cell lineages.
(Yang et al., J Immunol, 2011; Yang et al., Immunity, 2013)